have been wholly dismal in such a room without the
companionship of one of those inspiring daughters of Hygeia. Now that I
am beyond the confines of that room I must confess there seems to be
little in life anywhere without one. Bachelors are quickly restored by
their antitoxin cheer, but there is a more dangerous bacillus hidden in
this powerful living therapeutic agency which in afteryears works its
damaging, enervating effect in the heart of a man. They save but to
slay! Can there be no healing balm benign in a woman's tender sympathy?
Cannot the microbe of remorse be isolated from this serum beautifully
administered by melting eyes and graces so fair that we wonder to find
them so near our bitterest experiences? But there are wounds that will
not heal; some mysterious infection lingers in them to sustain a slow
fire, and the ashes of its discontent clog the channels till life seems
cast in the vale of death.

But no more of this anguish! I have not told her name--in this at least,
I shall be wise. I have not told of her family; why she became a
daughter of AEsculapius; and beyond those dancing blue eyes, she shall
not enter here. Neither shall anything be written of the things that
passed between us during those five weeks of my convalescence. What
matters it? Was I not in the world simply to be tempered and hardened by
all the adversities to which a heart may be subjected? And was I not an
inhuman wretch, who touched with the sting of sarcasm, ridicule and
scorn the vital things that interest normal beings? To me she became
only Hygeia--a goddess!

What a man of thirty years needs is mirth more abundantly than at
twenty, but the clouds were too thick around me then to take sane views.
Contentment comes when a man can shake the clouds inside out and bask in
the reflection of the silver lining that makes the other half of the
comedy agreeable. I seemed to be plunged into despair, to be confined in
a dungeon, with the devils of hate and all the monsters of abandoned
hopes shooting their tongues at me from the crannies of the damp, green
walls that hedged me in. Were they to be my torturers to the death? Then
why send a sick man to the hospital?

Even though my mind had been at peace otherwise, it would have been
impossible for me to regain my habit of unconcern and reliance upon my
own resources, deserted by the man in whom I had anchored my faith since
boyhood. Thought of his guilt oppressed me.

"Which would yo